Is That Not What Happened on 9/11?

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My thoughts on wars, past and future!


The tenth anniversary of the Iraq War is now being masticated and  regurgitated and most of the commentary is negative and suggests we should never engage in such type wars again.

When Cronkite and Kissinger concluded we could not win in Viet Nam and the latter engaged in negotiating America's  first military defeat it set a precedence which reverberates to this date.

Yes, many mistakes were made in Iraq (I posted two articles in a recent memo) but that is the nature of wars  and there are those who supported it because they too believed the existence of WMD and  now deny they held that position.  The Iraq War was premised on more than WMD but Sec. Powell made that the sole basis in his U.N. speech and thus, I believed, the press and media were able to  back GW into a corner and were able to pin the WMD tail on him asserting we were attacking Sadaam solely because he possessed  WMD.

We will never know whether GW's ultimate efforts would have proven successful (could Iraq establish a semblance of an Arab democracy that respected the rights of their different  tribal/ethnic factions) because Obama pulled out of Iraq prematurely and believed bashing GW was the political route to take because the war had become unpopular.

As long as this nation is unwilling to support a war to its full conclusion we should not engage in undertaking such because losing becomes a permanent and dangerous attitude and has equally negative consequences.

Future wars may not  resemble those of WW 1 and 2, where a definitive end and total surrender is accomplished and thus we should think long and hard before we not only go to war but also whether we, as a nation, are willing  to pay the cost both in human lives,  tax ourselves in contemporary  money and see it through to its conclusion however long that may take. I also believe we must be willing to end it quickly whatever that means in a military sense and choice of weapons.

Since I believe we have proven we no longer have the willingness and/or stomach to do so and losing has become a permanent part of our national psyche, I suspect we will not engage in future wars until such time as we are directly attacked -   But is not that what happened on 9/11?

I suspectObama's decision to turn America's foreign policy into  one of withdrawal and disengagement will reverberate for years and make the world a far more dangerous place. (See 1,1a and 1b below.)
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Even the thought and/or consideration of PC intrusions never ends.  (See 2 below.)
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Shortly after Harding died and Coolidge became president  America's budget debt was close to $30 billion.Coolidge pledged to implement Harding's policies and to cut America's debt. He was quoted as saying: "...I believe in budgets. I want other people to believe in them...I regard a good budget as among the noblest monuments of virtue..."  He and his Secretary of the Treasury, J.P. Morgan, did just that and when he left office the budget was balanced and our debt was virtually nil. 

Ryan can't even get many in Congress to consider a simple down payment .(See 3 below.)

What does Bernanke have to say. (See 3a below.)
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Caroline Glick terms Obama's visit mysterious.  (See 4 below)
Dick
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1)Iraq in Retrospect

The history the war's critics choose to ignore 10 years later.

It was 1998, and Iraq and the U.S. were edging toward war.

The Iraqi dictator, President Clinton warned that February, "threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal." In October, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy, passed 360-38 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate. In December, Mr. Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox, a four-day bombardment of Iraq with the declared purpose of degrading Saddam's WMD capability.

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, justifying the case for military action on the eve of Mr. Clinton's impeachment.

Whatever else might be said about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began 10 years ago, its origins, motives and justifications did not lie in the Administration of George W. Bush. On the contrary, when Mr. Bush came to office in January 2001 he inherited an Iraq that amounted to a simmering and endless crisis for the U.S.—one that Saddam appeared to be winning.

American and British warplanes enforced a no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq at a cost of $1 billion a year. The U.N.'s Oil for Food sanctions designed to "contain" Saddam were crumbling amid international opposition to its effects on the Iraqi people, even as the regime used the sanctions as a propaganda tool and as a vehicle to bribe foreign officials. Iraqi Kurds were in perpetual jeopardy, as Saddam demonstrated in 1996 when his Republican Guard took the city of Irbil and shot 700 Kurdish partisans.

Most seriously, after 1998 Iraq rid itself of weapons inspectors, meaning there wasn't even a small check on Saddam's ambitions to rebuild a WMD capability he had already proved willing to use. When the weapons inspectors finally returned to Iraq in the run-up to the invasion, they found Saddam playing the same cat-and-mouse games that had defeated them in the 1990s.

"No confidence can arise that proscribed programs or items have been eliminated," chief U.N. weapons inspector (and avowed war opponent) Hans Blix reported to the Security Council in January 2003, adding that "the Iraqi regime had allegedly misplaced 1,000 tons of VX nerve agent—one of the most toxic ever developed."

It was on these bases, and in the wake of the deadly 9/11 attacks, that Mr. Bush ordered the invasion. If he had lied about the intelligence—as was so widely alleged after the failure to find WMD—then so had Mr. Clinton in 1998, and so had the intelligence services of every Western intelligence service, including those of countries like Germany that opposed the war. Similarly, if Mr. Bush is to be blamed for going to war "illegally" because the U.S. failed to obtain explicit Security Council authorization, then so must Mr. Clinton for going to war with Serbia over Kosovo without U.N. blessing.

So much for the usual canards about the war. As for the failure to find WMD, what the postwar Iraq Survey Group concluded was that Saddam had the intention of restarting his weapons programs as soon as sanctions were lifted. "It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat," David Kay, the ISG's first head, testified to Congress in January 2004. "What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

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The larger intelligence (and military) failure was not anticipating the kind of war the U.S. would wind up waging in Iraq. General Tommy Franks planned a conventional military thrust to Baghdad while Saddam was laying the groundwork for the insurgency that would follow. The result was that U.S. commanders thought the war was effectively finished before it had really begun.

That mistake was compounded by General John Abizaid's "light footprint" strategy, which effectively ceded cities such as Fallujah to the insurgents while U.S. forces stayed on secure bases or conducted search-and-destroy operations. By the time Mr. Bush finally ordered Fallujah taken, late in 2004, the insurgency was full-blown and increasingly difficult to contain.

Those weren't Mr. Bush's only mistakes. He agreed to Paul Bremer's over-long regency in Iraq. He allowed Colin Powell to try diplomacy with Syria even as Bashar Assad was turning Damascus into a safe haven for Saddam loyalists and a transit center for al Qaeda jihadists. He did little to stop Iran from supplying both Shiite and Sunni insurgents with armor-busting munitions that killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers. He deferred for too long to mediocre commanders who thought it wasn't their business to defeat an insurgency they believed could only be solved through political means.

Above all, the Administration proved amazingly inept at rebutting its critics, particularly the politicians and pundits (you know who you are) who supported the war when it was popular and opposed it when it was not. Joe Wilson was proved a liar by a bipartisan Senate report, yet the myth persists that President Bush misled the public in his 2003 State of the Union address by claiming that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, largely because Administration officials needlessly conceded a point on which they were right.

The Administration also offered shifting rationales for the war. It stressed the WMD threat when it was trying to make a legal case at the U.N., and it later emphasized the importance of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Yet the central goal for the war—the one that topped an eight-point list in an internal White House memo from October 2002—was to create an Iraq that "does not threaten its neighbors." Had the Bush Administration stressed that the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction in Iraq was Saddam and his family, it would have run into less political trouble on the WMD claims.

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These failures were all the more tragic because they obscured much of what the war achieved. Today Iraq threatens none of its neighbors; it's a measure of the completeness of the transformation that we take this for granted. The war convinced Moammar Gadhafi to acknowledge and abandon his nuclear weapons program, making his eventual overthrow possible, and it even briefly succeeded in halting the Iranian nuclear program, something subsequent diplomatic efforts have failed to do.

Iraq's people are no longer under constant threat of imprisonment, torture and murder; Kurds, Shiites and Marsh Arabs are not at risk of genocide. And while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has an authoritarian streak, he is neither a sociopath nor a fanatic, which makes for a favorable comparison with many of his neighbors.

Despite partisan attacks that the war in Iraq was somehow a diversion from the real war on terror in Afghanistan, that's not how Osama bin Laden saw it. The war in Iraq, he said in December 2004, is "the most important and serious issue today for the whole world"; victory there, Ayman al Zawahiri said the following year, was the necessary condition for establishing a caliphate. What happened instead, thanks to the combination of the U.S. surge and the Sunni Awakening, was that al Qaeda was defeated militarily and rejected politically. That's more than can be said about the Taliban today.

All this was achieved by the time Mr. Bush left office: Unlike President Clinton, he bequeathed his successor an opportunity instead of a crisis. President Obama could have capitalized strategically on that by negotiating a status of forces agreement that anchored the U.S. relationship to Iraq and provided a U.S. military bulwark against Iran.

Instead, Mr. Obama chose to capitalize politically with a full withdrawal that appealed to his left base and furnished him with a campaign slogan. The result is an Iraq that is looking out for its own interests, with little concern for how they square with America's. Don't be surprised if someday Iraq is remembered as the war George Bush won and the peace Barack Obama lost.

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Today's conventional wisdom is that the Iraq war was an unmitigated fiasco that squandered American lives and treasure for the sake of a goal that wasn't worth the price. It's certainly true the Iraq war is a cautionary tale about the difficulty democracies have in sustaining lengthy military campaigns for any goal short of national survival.

What's also true, however, is that the war came about because the crisis of Iraq was allowed to fester for a decade, because Saddam was a real menace, and because a world in which he had been allowed to survive would have been far worse for America and the region. The men and women who fought and died removed a grave threat to the Middle East and to America.

As long as the U.S. remains a great power, it will eventually have to fight such a war again. When that day comes, let's hope our political and military leaders will have learned the right lessons from this bitter but necessary war.

1a)American Withdrawal and Global Disorder

As Obama ends U.S. security guarantees, nuclear weapons and violence will spread.

By ELIOT COHEN

Since the days of the Monroe Doctrine, American foreign policy has rested on a global system of explicit or implicit commitments to use military power to guarantee the interests of the U.S. and its allies. The current administration has chosen to reduce, limit or underfund those commitments, and the results—which we may begin to see before President Obama's term ends—will be dangerous.

Some of America's commitments are enshrined in treaties, such as Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, which says of NATO's 28 member countries that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." Other commitments are less formal. The U.S. has no defense treaty with Israel, but repeated presidential declarations, including those Mr. Obama will make during his trip this week, amount to nearly the same thing.

Some commitments are moral and humanitarian, such as the "responsibility to protect" that led American decision makers racked with guilt over the Rwanda massacres of 1994 to intervene in the Yugoslav civil war in 1998. All amount to a web of obligations that have been central to the American role in the world since World War II.

Over the past four years, the U.S. has scaled down its presence, ambitions and promises overseas. Mr. Obama has announced the end of the early-21st-century wars, though in truth the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are merely shifting to new, not necessarily less-vicious phases. He has refrained from issuing unambiguous threats to hostile states, such as Iran, that engage in bellicose behavior toward the U.S., and he has let his staff speak of "leading from behind" as a desirable approach to foreign policy.

He has reduced the U.S. military budget and is willing to cut more. His preferred use of force when dealing with terrorism is a protracted campaign of assassination by drone strike—which he says has succeeded fabulously, yet which curiously requires indefinite expansion.

In Mr. Obama's second term the limits of such withdrawal from conventional military commitments abroad will be tested. In East Asia, an assertive China has bullied the Philippines (with which the U.S. has a 61-year-old defense pact) over the Spratly islands, and China has pressed its claims on Japan (a 53-year-old defense pact) over the Senkaku Islands.

At stake are territorial waters and mineral resources—symbols of China's drive for hegemony and an outburst of national egotism. Yet when Shinzo Abe, the new prime minister of an understandably anxious Japan, traveled to Washington in February, he didn't get the unambiguous White House backing of Japan's sovereignty that an ally of long standing deserves and needs.

In Europe, an oil-rich Russia is rebuilding its conventional arsenal while modernizing (as have China and Pakistan) its nuclear arsenal. Russia has been menacing its East European neighbors, including those, like Poland, that have offered to host elements of a NATO missile-defense system to protect Europe.

In 2012, Russia's then-chief of general staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, declared: "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens." This would be the same Russia that has attempted to dismember its neighbor Georgia and now has a docile Russophile billionaire, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, to supplant the balky, independence-minded government loyal to President Mikhail Saakashvili.

In the Persian Gulf, American policy was laid down by Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address with what became the Carter Doctrine: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." America's Gulf allies may not have treaties to rely upon—but they do have decades of promises and the evidence of two wars that the U.S. would stand by them.

Today they wait for the long-promised (by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush) nuclear disarmament of a revolutionary Iranian government that has been relentless in its efforts to intimidate and subvert Iran's neighbors. They may wait in vain.

Americans take for granted the world in which they grew up—a world in which, for better or worse, the U.S. was the ultimate security guarantor of scores of states, and in many ways the entire international system.

Today we are informed by many politicians and commentators that we are weary of those burdens—though what we should be weary of, given that our children aren't conscripted and our taxes aren't being raised in order to pay for those wars, is unclear. The truth is that defense spending at the rate of 4% of gross domestic product (less than that sustained with ease by Singapore) is eminently affordable.

The arguments against far-flung American strategic commitments take many forms. So-called foreign policy realists, particularly in the academic world, believe that the competing interests of states tend automatically toward balance and require no statesmanlike action by the U.S. To them, the old language of force in international politics has become as obsolete as that of the "code duello," which regulated individual honor fights through the early 19th century. We hear that international institutions and agreements can replace national strength. It is also said—covertly but significantly—that the U.S. is too dumb and inept to play the role of security guarantor.

Perhaps the clever political scientists, complacent humanists, Spenglerian declinists, right and left neo-isolationists, and simple doubters that the U.S. can do anything right are correct. Perhaps the president should concentrate on nation-building at home while pressing abroad only for climate-change agreements, nuclear disarmament and an unfettered right to pick off bad guys (including Americans) as he sees fit.

But if history is any guide, foreign policy as a political-science field experiment or what-me-worryism will yield some ugly results. Syria is a harbinger of things to come. In that case, the dislocation, torture and death have first afflicted the locals. But it will not end there, as incidents on Syria's borders and rumors of the movement of chemical weapons suggest.

A world in which the U.S. abnegates its leadership will be a world of unrestricted self-help in which China sets the rules of politics and trade in Asia, mayhem and chaos is the order of the day in the Middle East, and timidity and appeasement paralyze the free European states. A world, in short, where the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must, and those with an option hurry up and get nuclear weapons.

Not a pleasant thought.

Mr. Cohen directs the Strategic Studies program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

1b)Churchill’s Children

By PETER FARMER 

In the early 1930s, as the storm clouds of fascism gathered on a distant horizon few could see, Winston S. Churchill warned a somnolent Europe of the enormous danger posed by Hitler and Nazism. Today, we know "The Last Lion" as perhaps the greatest statesman of the 20th century and the man who did more than any other to warn the world of the threat posed by a resurgent and hostile Germany.

Today, we have the benefit of hindsight and thereby know how prescient Churchill's warnings proved to be. In the 1930s, however, the perception was very different. Isolated in the back benches of Parliament, Churchill was seen as a has-been, a pathetic and lonely figure trying unsuccessfully to resurrect a failed political career by raising the alarm about a threat only he could see.

History has a funny way of turning the tables on people grown smug and complacent in their view of reality, and the changing fortunes of Mr. Churchill and his critics certainly prove the point. In the early 1930s, the smart money said that the aging parliamentarian was not just wrong but deluded - but by 1940, the smart money had been proven to be dumb and no one was laughing at the old warrior any longer.

The perseverance and courage of "The Last Lion" come to mind today, when seeing the example set by Lars Hedegaard,Kurt Westergaard and Geert Wilders.

Like Churchill some eighty years ago, they stand almost alone in warning the people of Europe of the growing danger in their midst, only this time the threat is not National Socialism, but something much older - what Churchill might have called "Mohammedanism," and what we know today as Islam.

As a young cavalry officer, Churchill fought with the forces of General Sir Herbert Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan, where in 1898, a force of eight thousand well-armed and equipped British Army regulars defeated a vastly larger Mahdi force of Sudanese Muslims. Immediately after the battle, Churchill returned to Britain and began writing the manuscript for what became a two-volume work entitled ‘The River War," a history and memoir of the Sudan campaign. Of the Mahdis he encountered, he wrote:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

Churchill proved to be remarkably prescient not only concerning Nazism, but concerning the resurgence of Islam and the threat it would pose against Europe and western civilization. Were he alive today, what would he say concerning the fate of his beloved Britain and the rest of Europe?

The formidable and pugnacious Mr. Churchill is no longer with us, but his successors are. Men like Geert Wilders, Lars Hedegaard and Kurt Westergaard carry on the defense of western civilization and its ancient traditions, much like the fierce "Last Lion" did before them. Metaphorically, we can call them "Churchill's children," even if they are not directly descended from the great man himself. Who are these brave men?  

Hedegaard and Westergaard are Danish, while Wilders is Dutch. Hedegaard is a journalist, Westergaard a political cartoonist; Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament. Despite the diversity of their backgrounds, all three men share something in common: each has been marked for death by Islam, and all have survived threats or actual assassination attempts upon their lives. All now live under police protection. These three men also share the willingness to risk ridicule, censure, legal sanction and even physical harm or death - in speaking what they see as the truth about Islam to a civilization in denial.

In 2005, the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published several of Westergaard's cartoons, some of which caricatured the Muslim prophet Mohammed - thereby setting off a firestorm of indignation within the Islamic world and within politically-correct circles in the west as well. For the "crime" of exercising his freedom of expression, an imam issued a fatwa condemning Westergaard to death. In 2010, Westergaard survived a home invasion in which a Somali Muslim armed with an axe broke into his residence in Aarhus, intending to kill him. However, Danish security forces shot the attacker before he could complete his mission.

In February 2013, Lars Hedegaard, the head of the Danish Free Press Society, survived an assassination attempt at his Frederiksberg home, when a male of Middle Eastern appearance - disguised as a Danish postal carrier - fired a handgun at Hedegaard after he answered his door to take delivery of a parcel. After the first shot narrowly missed his head, Hedegaard and his assailant struggled, whereupon the gunman regained possession of the weapon and attempted twice to fire again. Fortunately for Hedegaard, the pistol jammed both times. The assailant and a collaborator fled on foot.

Why was the 70-year old journalist and former teacher targeted? Authorities believe the precipitating event was the launch of the new Danish-Swedish periodical Dispatch International, which was formed in part to cover stories that other Scandinavian media outlets were not running, including the effects of Islamic immigration and law on the indigenous people of Europe. In the past, Hedegaard has been a frequent critic of Islam and a staunch defender of free speech.

Almost alone among mainstream European political leaders, Geert Wilders has sounded the alarm about the relentless Islamicization of Europe, and the assault being waged upon freedom of expression by Muslim immigrants intent upon importing sharia law. In 2004, Wilder's friend and fellow Dutchman Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri - allegedly for his role in the creation of the film Submission, which was/is critical of Islamic treatment of women. Rather than be intimidated into silence, Wilders intensified his efforts, culminating in the book "Marked for Death." Wilders, who continues to serve in the Dutch parliament, has survived several assassination attempts and now he and his family live under permanent police protection. He continues to travel, and speaks and writes widely on the subject of Islam and Europe.

Wilders, Westergaard and Hedegaard have been attacked and vilified in every way possible by their adversaries; they have been threatened and targeted physically, they have been sued, charged with hate crimes, libeled, slandered, subjected to propaganda and smear campaigns, and ridiculed at every turn - and not only by Muslims. Sometimes, those attacking them are their own countrymen and fellow Europeans. Through it all, they have remained resolute in their defense of the centuries-old traditions and freedoms of western civilization.

As determined as these men are, they cannot defend western civilization and its freedoms alone. The hour is late and time is short. Heedless of the defense mounted by "Churchill's children," Islamic advocates are currently working furiously at the United Nations to pass measures criminalizing speech and other forms of expression critical of Islam. Similar initiatives are underway in multiple countries across the globe. All are being financed by petro-dollars from the Middle East, if not directly then via indirect means.

In Great Britain, some workplaces have outlawed the eating of pork and other foods offensive to Muslims. In Canada, so-called human rights tribunals can prosecute Canadians - in the country of their birth, no less - for the "crime" of speaking about Islam in an unflattering way. In Oslo, Norway, one-hundred percent of cleared (solved) cases of rape for a recent year were committed by Muslim men against Norwegian women. Nevertheless, the official denial by the European Union continues and Muslim immigrants still flow unabated into the west.

When will others come to the aid and defense of "Churchill's children" - Geert Wilders, Lars Hedegaard, Kurt Westergaard and a very few others - as they man the battlements in defense of our civilization? A right unexercised is a right lost. If the people of the western world decline to exercise their rights of self-preservation and expression as free men and women, one day in the not-so-distant future, they may find that they no longer possess them.

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2)STATE DEPT. 'WOULD TAKE VERY SERIOUSLY' REQUEST TO MONITOR PAPAL ELECTIONS

The State Department said on Friday that the U.S. government “would take very seriously” a request from the Organization for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) that it monitor the papal election in the Vatican.

Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said she did some “digging” on this issue following Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee’s question on Thursday regarding whether the Obama administration believed that the election of Pope Francis had met international standards.

Lee’s exact question was as follows:

Does the United States regard the election of the Pope to--that election to have met international standards for the election of a world leader? He is, after all, a head of state, and a head of government... You routinely criticize countries or governments for having elections where there is not universal suffrage, where there is not any possibility of appealing the results, where there is not--where there were no monitors, for example. I’m wondering if this meets the standard for a free and fair election in your mind?

Lee went on to say, “Today, it seems like it would be the--it’s probably the least transparent election. I mean, it’s more opaque than an election in North Korea or Iraq under Saddam Hussein.”

“We consider Vatican City a sovereign juridical state,” replied Nuland. She continued:

As some of you know--I think Matt knows--that sovereign juridical state has about 600 resident citizens. I would simply note that in the context of the election for the Pope, they were electing the head of a religion. He’s also the head of this sovereign juridical state.

It’s interesting to us that since this is a European state, we have never had a request for ODIHR monitoring of the election, ODIHR being the election-monitoring entity in the European space. So, obviously, were that to come forward, we would take it very seriously.

Asked if such a request were made whether the Vatican would have to open up its voting process, Nuland responded that if a request were made for ODIHR monitoring of the voting, then the Vatican would be required to consider whether it would be open to ODIHR monitors.

“And, as I said yesterday,” Nuland continued, humorously, “We would--if you wanted to be a monitor, we could see if we could arrange it, Matt.”

Amid laughter from reporters, Nuland joked that other reporters could volunteer to be monitors for the papal elections as well. “We could have a whole roomful of monitors,” she said.

A reporter asked, “Is it then correct that the U.S. does not take a position on whether the election of the Pope was free and fair and transparent... without universal suffrage...?”

Nuland replied, “As I said yesterday, we don’t have any reason to question the process.”

According to CNSnews.com, the ODIHR is part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations affiliate. OSCE has 57 member states, including the Holy See and the United States.

Last October, Breitbart News reported that OSCE, in response to requests by civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the ACLU, planned to send out “observers” to monitor the United States election for voter suppression activities.

The ODIHR’s website states that its work “is aimed... at assisting participating States in meeting their OSCE commitments in areas such as democratic governance and lawmaking, the development of pluralistic party systems and political party regulation... and promoting gender equality and women’s political participation.”

The notion of international interference into the freedom of the Holy See to govern the Church is not an unusual concept in the current day. The New York Times reported that the nation of China congratulated Pope Francis on his election to the papacy, while at the same time it warned the Vatican not to meddle in what China deems to be its internal affairs.

The message emphasized the conflict between the Vatican and China’s communist government, which has been accused of suppressing Catholicism. Currently, China does not permit the pope to select his bishops freely in that country.

Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson in China, said that Beijing hoped the pope would work with Chinese officials on improving relations. However, she also said that the Vatican “must stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, including in the name of religion.”

In addition, Chunying said that the Vatican must break diplomatic relations with Taiwan before relations with Beijing can improve. The Vatican, however, has insisted that China provide assurances on granting religious freedom to the estimated 12 million Roman Catholics that have been divided for many years between a state-supervised church, overseen by non-Vatican approved bishops, and an “underground” movement that rejects ties to the government.

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3)Ryan Says Congress Should Aim for ‘Down Payment’ on Defici

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said the most lawmakers can hope for for this year is reaching a budget deal that amounts to a “down payment” on deficit reduction.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Ryan said there is room for compromise over issues such as Medicare, where he said limited changes could be made that “don’t offend either party’s political philosophy” and can nevertheless “generate big savings.”

Aside from his proposal to partially privatize Medicare, his budget plan calls for incremental changes such as charging wealthier beneficiaries higher premiums, something President Barack Obama has also endorsed.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, reiterated his party’s opposition to additional tax increases, saying lawmakers already raised tax rates on top earners’ income as part of a January budget deal.

“We want to get a down payment on deficit and debt reduction,” he said. “We think that’s good for the economy, we think that’s good for the credit markets, we think that’s good for confidence — and that is where we hope to end up at the end of the day here. We understand the president’s not going to take all of our entitlement reforms.”

He also said he expects the House on March 21 to pass a stopgap spending measure, now being considered in the Senate, to avert a government shutdown. Current funding expires March 27.

‘Key Question’

Obama’s recent contacts with Republicans are “refreshing” though most question “is it sincere and lasting, and only time will tell,” Ryan said. The 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate said he hasn’t met with Obama since they had lunch earlier this month, though they’ll see each other at an event with Ireland’s prime minster.

The House this week is set to consider the latest version of Ryan’s annual budget plan. It calls for balancing the government’s books through about $4.6 trillion in spending cuts.

Ryan’s plan would make new cuts in domestic “discretionary” spending next year, on top of the automatic cuts that began March 1. Once inflation is taken into account, his proposal would roll that portion of the budget — which pays for medical research, education, parks and other programs — back
to about 2001 levels.

Medicaid Cuts

It also calls for requiring food-stamp recipients to work, significantly cuts Medicaid funding and freezes the maximum Pell college tuition grant. It proposes an overhaul of the U.S. tax code that would trade lower rates for fewer individual tax preferences. By 2023, Ryan’s budget plan anticipates the government would show a small surplus.

Senate Democrats plan this week to take up a competing proposal that’s mostly focused on shifting the $1.2 trillion in cuts that have begun taking effect. It would replace the automatic cuts with a combination of tax increases for top earners and spending cuts.

The two chambers “are worlds apart” on the broader fiscal issues, said Ryan. That would mean Congress would go without a budget for a fourth consecutive year.

3b)Fed Projects High Unemployment Into 2015 in Sign Rates Will Remain Low


The Federal Reserve foresees unemployment remaining high into 2015, suggesting it will keep short-term interest rates near record lows at least until then.

In its latest economic forecasts released Wednesday, the Fed predicts that the unemployment rate will stay above 6.5 percent for about two more years. Fed policymakers also expect the economy to grow modestly this year and next despite economic gains so far in 2013.

The Fed's updated forecasts are nearly identical to projections it made in December. The Fed has said it plans to keep its benchmark rate near zero as long as unemployment exceeds 6.5 percent and the inflation outlook is tame.

The policymakers expect the economy to grow as little as 2.3 percent this year — not enough to quickly drive down unemployment — or as high as 2.8 percent. In 2014, growth could range from 2.9 percent to 3.4 percent in 2014, they predict.

The Fed has slightly upgraded its outlook for unemployment. It now sees the rate falling to between 7.3 percent and 7.5 percent by the end of this year. That's down from a previous range of 7.4 percent to 7.7 percent.

The rate fell to 7.7 percent in February, the lowest in four years.

By the end of 2014, the Fed expects the rate to fall between 6.7 percent and 7 percent. That's a narrower range than in December, when it forecast a range of 6.8 percent to 7.3 percent. 

Speaking at a news conference, Chairman Ben Bernanke stressed that while the economy has improved, the Fed won't ease its aggressive stimulus policies until it's convinced the economic gains can be sustained. An unemployment rate of 6.5 percent is a threshold, not a "trigger," for a possible rate increase, he said.

Bernanke also said the Fed might vary the size of its monthly bond purchases depending on whether or how much the job market improves. The unemployment rate has fallen to a four-year low of 7.7 percent, among many signs of a healthier economy.

"We are seeing improvement," Bernanke said. "One thing we would need is to see this is not temporary improvement." 


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4)Obama's mysterious visit
Caroline B. Glick 

In contrast to the high expectations the White House cultivated in pre-Cairo visit statements, Obama has downplayed his visit to Israel.

Why is US President Barack Obama coming to Israel today? In 2008, then president George W. Bush came to celebrate Israel’s 60th Independence Day, and to reject Israeli requests for assistance in destroying Iran’s nuclear installations.

In 1996, then-president Bill Clinton came to Israel to help then-prime minister Shimon Peres’s electoral campaign against Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

It is possible that Obama is coming here in order to build up pro-Israel bonafides. But why would he bother? Obama won his reelection bid with the support of the overwhelming majority of American Jews. Their support vindicated his hostility toward Israel in his first term. He has nothing to prove.

It is worth comparing Obama’s visit to Israel at the start of his second term of office, with his visit to Cairo at the outset of his first term in office.

Ahead of that trip, the new administration promised that the visit, and particularly Obama’s “Address to the Muslim World,” would serve as a starting point for a new US policy in the Middle East. And Obama lived up to expectations.

In speaking to the “Muslim World,” Obama signaled that the US now supported pan-Islamists at the expense of US allies and Arab nationalist leaders, first and foremost then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Moreover, in castigating Israel for its so-called “settlements”; channeling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by intimating that Israel exists because of the Holocaust; and failing to travel from Cairo to Jerusalem, preferring instead to visit a Nazi death camp in Germany, Obama signaled that he was downgrading US ties with the Jewish state.

In sharp contrast to the high expectations the Obama White House cultivated in pre-Cairo visit statements and leaks, Obama and his advisers have downplayed the importance of his visit to Israel, signaling there will be no significant changes in Obama’s policies toward Israel or the wider Middle East.

For instance, in his interview with Israel television’s Channel 2 last week, on issue after issue, Obama made clear that there will be no departure from his first term’s policies. He will continue to speak firmly and do nothing to prevent Iran from developing the means to produce nuclear weapons.

He will not release convicted Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard from federal prison despite the fact that Pollard’s life sentence, and the 28 years he has already served in prison are grossly disproportionate to all sentences passed on and served by offenders who committed similar crimes.

As for the Palestinians, Obama repeated his fierce opposition to Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines, and his insistence that Israel must get over its justified fears regarding Palestinian intentions and withdraw from Judea and Samaria, for its own good.

Given that all of these are positions he has held throughout his presidency, the mystery surrounding his decision to come to Israel only grows. He didn’t need to come to Israel to rehash policies we already know.

Much of the coverage of Obama’s trip has focused on symbolism. For instance, the administration decided to boycott Ariel University by not inviting its students to attend Obama’s speech to students from all other universities that is set to take place on Thursday in Jerusalem. In boycotting Ariel, Obama’s behavior is substantively the same as that of Britain’s Association of University Teachers. In 2005 that body voted to boycott University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University in the Negev. But while the AUT’s action was universally condemned, Obama’s decision to bar Israelis whose university is located in a city with 20,000 residents just because their school is located beyond the 1949 armistice lines has generated litte attention.

Then again, seeing as Obama’s snub of Ariel University is in keeping with the White House’s general war with anyone who disputes its view that Judea and Samaria are Arab lands, the lack of outrage at his outrageous behavior makes sense. It doesn’t represent a departure from his positions in his first term.

The only revealing aspect of Obama’s itinerary is his decision to on the one hand bypass Israel’s elected representatives by spurning the invitation to speak before the Knesset; and on the other hand to address a handpicked audience of university students – an audience grossly overpopulated by unelectable, radical leftists.

In the past, US presidents have spoken before audiences of Israeli leftists in order to elevate and empower the political Left against the Right. But this is the first time that a US president has spurned not only the elected Right, but elected leftist politicians as well, by failing to speak to the Knesset, while actively courting the unelectable radical Left through his talk to a university audience.

Clinton constantly embraced the Israeli Left while spurning the Right – famously refusing to meet with then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1997 while both leaders’ jets were parked on the same tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport.

Clinton’s assiduous courtship of Israel’s Left enabled him to portray himself as a true friend of Israel, even as he openly sought to undermine and overthrow the elected government of the country.

But Clinton always favored leftist politicians – Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak – over rightist politicians. He did not spurn leftist politicians in favor of even more radical unelectable leftists.

So what does Obama seek to achieve with this novel practice? Clearly he is not attempting to use the opportunity of addressing this audience to express contrition for his first term’s policies. In his interview with Channel 2, Obama spoke of the instability on Israel’s borders – but never mentioned the key role he played in overthrowing Mubarak and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood, thus emptying of meaning Israel’s peace treaty with the most populous Arab state.

He never mentioned that his feckless handling of Syria’s civil war ensured that the moderate opposition forces would be eclipsed by radical Islamists affiliated with al-Qaida, as has happened, or expressed concern that al-Qaida forces are now deployed along Syria’s border with Israel, and that there is a real and rising danger that Syria’s arsenals of chemical and biological weapons, as well as its ballistic missiles, will fall into their hands. Indeed, Tuesday it was reported that the al-Qaida infiltrated opposition attacked regime forces with chemical weapons.

Obama will not use his speech before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s most outspoken critics to express remorse over the hostility with which he treated Israel’s leader for the past four years. He will not admit that his decision to coerce Israel into suspending Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria in his first term gave the PLO justification for refusing to meet with or negotiate with the Israeli government.

So since he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, and he intends to continue the same policies in his second term, why did he decide to come to Israel? And why is he addressing, and so seeking to empower the radical, unelectable Left? Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was held at the Islamist Al-Azhar Univerity. By speaking at Al-Azhar, Obama weakened Mubarak in three different ways. First, Al-Azhar’s faculty members regularly issue religious rulings calling for the murder of non-Muslims, prohibiting the practice of Judaism, and facilitating the victimization of women. In stating these views, Al-Azhar’s leadership has demonstrated that their world view and values are far less amenable to American strategic interests and moral values than Mubarak’s world view was. By speaking at Al-Azhar, Obama signaled that he would reward the anti-American Islamists at the expense of the pro-American Arab nationalists.

Second, in contempt of Mubarak’s explicit wishes, Obama insisted on inviting members of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech. In acting as he did, Obama signaled that under his leadership, the US was abandoning its support for Mubarak and transferring its sympathies to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Finally, by addressing his remarks to the Muslim nation, Obama was perceived as openly rejecting Egyptian nationalism, and indeed the concept of unique national identities among the various Arab states. In so doing, Obama undercut the legitimacy of the Egyptian regime while legitimizing the pan- Islamic Muslim Brotherhood which rejects nationalism in favor of a call for the establishment of a global caliphate.

As subsequent events showed, the conditions for the Egyptian revolution that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power were prepared during Obama’s speech at al-Azhar.

It is possible that in addressing the unelected radical Left in Jerusalem, Obama seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the Israeli government. But if that is the plan, then it would bespeak an extraordinary contempt and underestimation of Israeli democracy. Such a plan would not play out the same way his Egyptian speech did.

There are two possible policies Obama would want to empower Israel’s radical, unelectable Left in order to advance. First, he could be strengthening these forces to help them pressure the government to make concessions to the Palestinians in order to convince the Palestinian Authority to renew negotiations and accept an Israeli peace offer.

While Obama indicated in his interview with Channel 2 that this is his goal, it is absurd to believe it. Obama knows there is no chance that the Palestinians will accept a deal from Israel. PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat both rejected Israeli peace offers made by far more radical Israeli governments than the new Netanyahu government. Moreover, the Palestinians refused to meet with Israeli negotiators while Mubarak was still in power. With the Muslim Brotherhood now in charge in Cairo, there is absolutely no way they will agree to negotiate – let alone accept a deal.

This leaves another glaring possibility. Through the radical Left, Obama may intend to foment a pressure campaign to force the government to withdraw unilaterally from all or parts of Judea and Samaria, as Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. If this is Obama’s actual policy goal, it would represent a complete Europeanization of US policy toward Israel. It was the EU that funded radical leftist groups that pushed for Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005.

And in the past week, a number of commentators have spoken and written in favor of such a plan.

The truth we don’t know why Obama is coming to Israel. The Obama administration has not indicated where its Israel policy is going. And Obama’s Republican opposition is in complete disarray on foreign policy and not in any position to push him to reveal his plans.

What we can say with certainty is that the administration that supports the “democratically elected” Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and did so much to clear all obstacles to its election, is snubbing the democratically elected Israeli government, and indeed, Israel’s elected officials in general. Obama’s transmission of this message in the lead-up to this visit, through symbols and action alike does not bode well for Israel’s relations with the US in the coming four years.

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